Blending the rules

It may not be immediately apparent but one of the decade's most significant marketing trends has been the linking of notions of quality and uniqueness with the geographical origin of a particular wine. So-called single vineyard wines in particular are often sold in limited numbers, at premium retail prices.

Many consumers buy them with the expectation that their aromas and flavours not only reflect characteristics of grape variety and vintage but also come with a sense of place or "terroir". More importantly, they are often regarded as highly desirable purchases on the grounds that they are invariably better and more interesting wines than those created by blending together parcels of grapes or wines from separate vineyard locations.

Purity of origin is seen as a winning formula in many areas of marketing, says award-winning Tasmanian winemaker Julian Alcorso. 

The trouble is, the concept of purity of wine origin - what Alcorso calls `singularity' - may not always be backed by a product that's been made to an exacting level of quality. Just look at the results of the recent 2005 Tasmanian Wine Show, he says. The vast majority of the event's 450 entries were drawn from single vineyard sites all over the State, yet half its top 50 medal winners were multi-vineyard blends made by companies like Bay of Fires and Tamar Ridge.

Not surprisingly, the master craftsman behind trophy winners like the 2005 The Wine Society Tasmanian Riesling would prefer to see such blends being more highly fancied by premium wine consumers.

"It's really fascinating to see what happens when you put some of these blends together," says the boss of Winemaking Tasmania, his contract winemaking business located at Cambridge in the State's south.

"When you put wines A and B together, you don't always end up with C. You might end up with D or E, based on the way some of the various wine ingredients play off against each other. It's often quite exciting and unpredictable. That's where blenders have real advantages over producers of single vineyard wines."

Alcorso's views on Tasmanian Riesling may be contentious among many of his peers but nobody else in the industry has been around the variety longer than the bloke who grew up at Moorilla Estate, outside Hobart. 

He was literally a kid in short pants when his father Claudio Alcorso planted 90 Riesling vines on his beloved Berriedale property in 1958 to perhaps unwittingly help pioneer our cool climate wine industry. He was there too in 1962 when six cases of hand-picked Moorilla Estate grapes were foot-stomped and fermented to produce Tasmania's first-ever Riesling.

Less than two decades later, the younger Alcorso took over the role of full-time winemaker. 

Right on cue, he began making some breathe-taking young wines there. In 1987, the 1985 Moorilla Estate Botrytis Cinerea was described by renowned author and wine show judge James Halliday as 'one of the most Germanic wines so far seen in Australia.'

"Tasmanian Riesling?" Alcorso asks rhetorically.

"We can kill anything made in Australia when we do it properly."

Blending the rules on Riesling might appear out of step with present-day winemaking and marketing but this wine wiz has an enviable show record to support his fiercely held views. That 2005 vintage from The Wine Society, for example, has already captured two gold medals and three trophies during its brief show career, and looks set to continue on its winning ways. 

Alcorso says the wine is one of three Tasmanian products that have resulted from a 2002 joint arrangement between Winemaking Tasmania and The Wine Society. 

The 50,000-member, subscription-based cooperative was founded in Sydney in 1948. It offers wines for sale at three levels of quality. The Society's Tasmanian Riesling, Chardonnay and Pinot Noirs are marketed as super-premium wines.

The current release Tasmanian Riesling was named the Tasmanian Wine Show's Best 2005 Vintage Wine. It was sourced from three separate vineyards - Derwent Estate, Laurel Bank, and 572 Richmond Road. Instead of being made by simply blending and fermenting a single mix of grapes grown and picked in the vineyards, the wine resulted from blending together specific portions of each of the three finished wines. Three discretely different Rieslings made from their three discretely different sites.

In addition to producing a top-notch product, Alcorso believes the process he employs encourages growers to give full attention to all their vines, not merely those being allocated to lauded estate-grown labels.

"What's at stake here is fruit quality," he says.

"I never cease to be amazed by the fact that you can have vineyards that are not all that far from one another yet the fruit and the wines end up being totally different from one another.

"It's all about the fruit. That's where the wine quality comes from. In the vineyard."

First published 10 February 2005: The Examiner